Chicago Style Workout 19: Plurals

/ September 26, 2017

Synchronized swimmers

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This workout centers on paragraphs 7.5–15 in CMOS 18. Advanced editors might tackle the questions cold; learners can study that section of the Manual before answering.

(Subscribers to The Chicago Manual of Style Online may click through to the linked sections of the Manual. We also offer a 30-day free trial of CMOS Online.)

Note: Dictionaries and style guides sometimes disagree. These questions are designed to test your knowledge of The Chicago Manual of Style, which prefers the dictionary at Merriam-Webster.com. Other style guides may follow a different dictionary.

Now updated to refer and link to the 18th edition.

Chicago Style Workout 19: Plurals

1. Where Merriam-Webster gives two forms of the plural—whether as primary and secondary variants, like zeros and zeroes, or as equal variants, like millennia and millenniums—Chicago normally opts for the first.
2. Chicago style avoids tricky plurals, preferring to put the s on the end of the last word regardless of how the word is formed (“father-in-laws”) (“court-martials”) (“coup d’états”).
3. Abbreviations that consist of capital letters form the plural by adding s unless they themselves end in S, in which case the plural requires es: IRAs, MAs, PhDs, but BSes.
4. The plural endings to italicized words in another language should also be set in italics: Blume, Blumen; cheval, chevaux; señor, señores.
5. To aid comprehension, individual letters form the plural with an apostrophe and an s: two A’s; x’s and y’s.
6. “They were popular in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century.”
7. “They were popular from the twentieth to the twenty-first century.”
8. Names ending in an unpronounced s or x are best left in the singular form.
9. The plural of the surname Jones is formed with an apostrophe: Jones’s.
10. No ifs, ands, or buts.

 

Photo: Synchronized swimmers, by o.did, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

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